Lumped pseudo fission products during burnup step in MCNP5-ORIGEN coupling system

Depletion calculation and accurate inventory of fission products in a nuclear system are required for criticality, safety and spent fuel management. Actual trend is to use Monte Carlo methods. It is well known that the fission process produces a large number of nuclides, some of which have a significant impact on the nuclear properties of the core and its behavior. In this study, we propose to determine the influence of fission products on the behavior of the IAEA 10 MW benchmark reactor. Even if nowadays we have powerful computing capability and we can solve the full system of fission products, such calculations are cumbersome and not needed because most of fission products have low absorption rates and therefore their precise concentrations calculation are not required. The practice is to identify and use only the nuclides which can have a significant absorption cross section. From the entire fission products of the available fissionable actinides, 214 nuclides have been considered. Their selection was essentially based on their absorption rates. To carry out the calculation, 81 were treated explicitly and 133 were lumped into pseudo fission products. A computational method has been developed for burnup and criticality calculations using MCNP5-ORIGEN coupling scheme. The MIXE_ACE program was developed and incorporated within this coupling scheme in order to mix and rewrite in ACE format the selected cross sections of the pseudo fission products for each burnup step. The mass weight of the constituent nuclides was used. The initial one group cross sections library for ORIGEN was generated using average flux spectrum in the core. Using the above methodology, an estimation of keff and cross sections during depletion calculations has been carried out for the IAEA 10 MW reactor based on UZrH1.6 fuel. The results are compared to those of ANL (Argonne National Laboratory), MCNP6 and other calculations by using selected fission products from WIMS library. Generally, the results are satisfactory but some discrepancies exist. The differences can be explained mainly by the nature of the fission products considered in the calculation and especially their cross sections. •MCNP5-ORIGEN coupling system has been developed for criticality and burnup calculations.•214 fissions products have been considered in the calculation.•133 FPs were lumped into one pseudo nuclide using MIXE_ACE program for each burnup step.•Application the coupling system for the IAEA 10 MW reactor